


resilience (accepting what you can’t know)

by summerdayghost



Category: Heathers (1988)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-20 17:59:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17027400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerdayghost/pseuds/summerdayghost
Summary: Bud after the death of his son.





	resilience (accepting what you can’t know)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blueinkedfrost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blueinkedfrost/gifts).



The first thing Bud thought about when he got the news was his wife. Specifically her face. She always had a lovely face which was why he married her. Her face was at its loveliest when she served their car into oncoming traffic which was why he shouldn’t have married her.

She never really wanted to be here, and that wasn’t really his fault. It wasn’t his no matter how much her side of the family blamed him. They would probably blame him for JD now too.

A few times she tried to take Bud with her to that mysterious other side. He was far too resilient for the aforementioned time in traffic, that time on the bridge, that time on in the bathtub, and only god knew how many more times. Bud didn’t always notice her suicide attempts. He sure as fuck didn’t notice the one that stuck until it was too late.

Perhaps she thought she would kill his passion, but her death didn’t even tarnish his true love for explosives. God, it was hard, yes, but he survived. There was just as much light in Big Bud’s eye as there had ever been, just as much joy.

Of course all, these years later it turned out that she had taken someone with her after all. It was just their child she waved at instead of Bud. Wherever they were they were probably laughing at him.

…

Why couldn’t JD have just taken the hamster with him? It could have happily fit in his pocket even with a jacket stuffed full of explosives. He could have taken the thing on a nice little adventure. The hamster probably would have loved it.

Because now Bud was stuck with a hamster he didn’t know the first thing about, not even it’s name. The hamster had been JD’s thing entirely. He didn’t have time for it. But somehow he didn’t have it in him to just let it die like he would have at any other time.

…

Bud was about to haul ass as far from Westerberg as he could manage. He was stopped by an extra storm of chaos. This chaos came in the form of a girl who wore blue. She seemed nice enough, or more accurately forgettable enough, that one time they met.

It wasn’t the first time she had spoken to them as the sole witness of JD’s demise, but the story she gave the police three days after JD’s death was wild. She told a flashy and cynical tale with three bodies. Bud thought it sounded like attention seeking horseshit, but the rest of the town didn’t. Anything to straighten the wrists of football heroes, he guessed.

…

There were a lot of questions Bud didn’t have answers to. The cops thought he had to have the answers, and he was just sitting on them. He wasn’t doing that. There would be no reason to. If only the cops understood that.

They asked him questions about a girl from Las Vegas who’s head was found outside a motel. He vaguely remembered her from a newspaper he read on the way out of Nevada, but he had certainly never met her. Apparently JD had. There were pictures of them together all over her room.

They asked him about a boy found dead at his typewriter in Boston. This boy Bud could actually say things about even if he didn’t immediately recognize the name. JD and that boy were close, too close if you asked Bud. After that boy died JD sulked until they moved.

The suicide note read, “I’m sorry I’m so completely worthless and can’t be depended upon to do anything I am such a coward.” The cops suspect JD May have wrote that note in the same way they suspect he might have put that girl’s head there.

Hours of stupid questions slogged on by. The cops clearly were judging him based on what kind of father wouldn’t know these things. Had Bud been stupider and younger he would have told them where they could shove it.

He wished he had something that gave him the ability to say that JD absolutely did not do those things they thought he did. That his son would never do something like that. The problem was is that his son had done things exactly like that.

…

There was a blonde girl who cried a lot and was always at the station. Her name was Heather, but Bud never thought of her as that. It was too confusing. Seemed like everybody in the whole godforsaken town was named Heather.

The only reason he remembered her at all was that he managed to convince her to adopt JD’s hamster. To be fair Bud marketed it as his own hamster that he no longer felt he could take care of which wasn’t too far off the mark. Hey, if he would have told her the truth she might have drowned the thing. That wouldn’t have been too bad on second thought but something about it felt wrong.

She was happy to take the little guy though. She even promised Bud could visit whenever he liked.

…

JD probably would have wanted to be buried in Texas near his mother. The boy was a softie like that. Well, if he really wanted that he should have thought about it before he blew himself up in a state so far away.

JD probably didn’t want that. Why would he want to be with someone who abandoned him? Why wouldn’t he?

Okay, at the end of the day Bud didn’t really know what his son wanted and what was just projection. He was never going to get the chance to learn the difference. That was going to have to be okay.

Bud would take JD to Texas if the police ever released his remains from evidence. He’d probably cremate him though. It was easier to lug around an urn than chunks of teenager.

Bud hadn’t been to Texas ever since his wife died. He thought he might like to see it again.


End file.
